Letter to the DEP V

December 19, 2009

To Whom it May Concern:

I wish to state my opposition to the dam removal project proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The many letters of protest that the proposal has generated iterate most of my ideas: the ridiculous ecological disaster of the dam removal, the irreparable damage to the environment, the prohibitive costs, the problems of fire protection, the possible damage to local wells, and the biased financial interests of the current polluters, the “watertreatment” facilities. I have been to two of the hearings on this proposal, and the many people who speak seem universally appalled by the whole procedure as well as the proposal itself.

My voice represents a small neighborhood of abutters to the river in the Marlboro Road district of Gleasondale (Stow). We have gathered together and discussed the proposal, and we look with alarm on those outsiders who apparently think they act in our behalf. Furthermore, at one of the meetings, the Army Corps representative smiled smugly and implied that the protesters were common “tree-huggers,” i.e., disillusioned and romantic wild–life lovers who stand in the way of progress. With this kind of “dispassionate” and biased opinions running the show, we who are citizens feel steamrollered by a machine which has no particular feeling for the area they seek to destroy.

My tax money indirectly paid for the survey. Our tax money pays the salaries of the Corps of Engineers and the Massachusetts Conservation Corps. Why, then, do they conveniently pocket the Stow protestors as a group to whom thy are not directly responsible?

The proposal to remove the dams is environmentally faulty and financially ridiculous. Kindly hear the many voices of reason and a pursue a more rational course of action.